Private Sector Practice Lead

Dhruhini Maneshka Eliatamby, PhD, is the Private Sector Practice Lead at Iris Group. She directs the WAYS workplace advisory services initiative with a consortium of partners and consultants to deliver technical services focused on women and youth empowerment, women’s health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) to private sector companies. Drawing on her early career experience as a management consultant at KPMG, Maneshka spent five years at Iris Group building out USAID co-funded programs to advance workplace WASH, menstrual health and hygiene, and sexual and reproductive health with clients including The Marriott Group, The Hyatt, and leading businesses in insurance, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality/entertainment sectors. Her gender and youth integration experience spans Tanzania and Nepal where she supported local project teams implementing integrated water resource programs and COVID-19 research; supporting municipalities in Bangladesh and India to plan for city-wide inclusive sanitation; and working with private sector partners in Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Nigeria to integrate gender into social marketing programs, organizational policies, and governance.

Before joining Iris Group, Maneshka served as Senior Asia Regional Manager at Search for Common Ground, where she provided oversight on gender, youth, peace and development programming and social and behavior change communication (SBCC) in 12 Asian countries. She is also the co-editor and author of Women Waging War & Peace (Continuum Press, 2011), and taught reflective practice and gender integration in development as a visiting professor at graduate programs at George Mason University in Virginia, the University of Malta, and the African University for Science and Technology in Nigeria.